Breakout Session III
Biomass Crops and Cropping Systems
Richard Flavell Richard Flavell joined Ceres as Chief Scientific Officer in 1998. From 1987 to 1998, he was the Director of the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England, a premier plant and microbial research institute. He has published over 200 scientific articles, lectured widely and contributed significantly to the development of modern biotechnology in agriculture. His research group in the United Kingdom was among the very first worldwide to successfully clone plant DNA, isolate and sequence plant genes, and produce transgenic plants. In 1999, Dr. Flavell was named a Commander of the British Empire for his contributions to plant and microbial sciences. Dr. Flavell received his Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia and is a Fellow of EMBO and of The Royal Society of London. He is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Matthew Liebman
Matt Liebman is a professor of agricultural ecology at
Iowa State University. His research group focuses on cropping system
diversification, soil amendments, and weed ecology and management. Included
within the scope of Dr. Liebmann’s work are experiments involving crop
rotations, cover crops, green manures, intercrops, animal manures, composts,
and insects and rodents that consume weed seeds. Much of the approach he
takes toward studying the crop-soil-weed interface is described in
Ecological Management of Agricultural Weeds (Cambridge University Press,
2001), which he co-authored with Drs. Charles Mohler and Charles Staver.
Recently, he has become involved in research examining the environmental
impacts of using new crops and native perennial grasses for biofuel
production. He serves as chair of the interdepartmental Graduate Program in
Sustainable Agriculture (http://www.sust.ag.iastate.edu/gpsa/), and he is a
member of the graduate faculties in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,
Biorenewable Resources and Technology, and Crop Production and Physiology.
Brendan Jordan is the Program Manager for Biomass Programs at the Great Plains Institute. The Great
Plains Institute is a regional non-profit corporation based in Minneapolis that primarily serves the states of
Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and the province of Manitoba. The Institute brings together
key public and private leaders from across the Midwest to identify and implement policies, technology
demonstrations and research that will accelerate the transition to a renewable and low-carbon energy system by
mid-century. Jordan manages programs which focus on the development of biomass as a resource for creating value added energy
and products to displace fossil fuels, stimulate rural economic development, make improvements to air, soil, and
water quality, and address global warming. Jordan helps staff the newly formed North Central Bioeconomy
Consortium, a partnership between state Departments of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension, and Land Grant
Agricultural Experiment Stations in 12 Midwestern states. He has also staffed the Biomass Working Group, a
55+ member stakeholder group from the Upper Midwest whose policy recommendations for advanced biomass
technologies informed legislation in several states for the 2007 legislative sessions. Jordan worked on the
Institute’s U.S. Department of Energy-funded native grass energy research – a collaborative research
project involving SDSU, UND-EERC, and the University of Minnesota.
Robert Fireovid Robert Fireovid is the National Program Leader, Bioenergy at the
Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. Fireovid joined
the National Program Staff at the USDA in November, 2004, and focuses on bioenergy and
bioproducts. Previously, he was at the Dept. of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST) where he spent ten years as a program manager in the Advanced Technology
Program (ATP). While at ATP, Robert led nationwide programs in high-risk/high-payback R&D within
the chemical, materials, agricultural and industrial biotechnology industries and worked with
companies such as Cargill-Dow, Genencor, Metabolix, Seminis, Cognis, Metabolix, Maxygen/Verdia,
Maxygen/Codexis and CropTech. Robert has been involved in biobased research for over 30 years,
starting with his Ph.D. work on ethanol fermentation of cellulosic feedstocks. He has performed
“bioproducts” research on pencillin fermentation and enzymatic production 6-APA
(Wyeth Labs), the conversion of lactic acid to acrylics (Corn Products), and fermentation-derived
food additives (Hercules). In addition to a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, Fireovid has an MBA
from Northwestern University and was a business manager at both Black & Decker and GE Plastics.
Brendan Jordan
